Seduced by a Pirate by Eloisa James

muscle.
    “Swimming in clothes is tiresome,” he told her. He bent over to pull off his boots, grunting as he pulled off the right one.
    She started to her feet. “May I help?”
    “Yes,” he drawled. “Kneel before me, and I’ll show you precisely where I need help.” His laughing eyes spoke volumes about what he’d like her to do—and removing his remaining boot had nothing to do with it. Besides, the boot was already gone; now he was ripping free the buttons on his breeches.
    Startled, she laughed, stumbled, and fell backward onto the bed.
    He threw himself down beside her on his side. He was utterly gorgeous, naked and virile, his hair rumpled and that little flower under his eye somehow emphasizing his masculinity.
    “The seventeen-year-old in me would like to point out that, contrary to expectation and your truly dazzling self, I am still up to the task.”
    Her eyes fell between his legs, laughter bubbling out, trailing off at the sight of him. He drew his hand down his length, preening.
    “Show-off,” she said, wrenching her eyes away.
    “Wounded male vanity.” He gave himself another slow caress and she found herself watching again. “I’d rather you did this for me.”

 
    F OURTEEN
    P hoebe’s dress was driving Griffin mad. Well, that and her lips, dyed ruby dark from hard kisses. The gown was a bluish color, its material so frail that he could see the line of her thigh. It had no bodice to speak of, so every voluptuous inch of her was on display, waiting for his touch.
    It was a dress that might well belong to a harlot in a high-class brothel. It made him wonder who she’d worn it for before him, before he shut the thought away in a dark part of his mind.
    That part of her life was over. Over.
    But he wanted that dress off her. And he didn’t want her to ever wear it again. That wasn’t a gown that one’s wife wore, even if she had taken a lover.
    And yet . . . she had looked as startled as a virgin when he touched himself. She hadn’t been frightened in the least all those years ago. As he remembered it, she had briskly pulled up her nightgown and lain back on the bed like the embodiment of every boy’s wet dream.
    “Do as you will,” she had said, or something to that effect.
    Now she was just as luscious, her curls spilling over her shoulders and her nipples standing out against the frail material of her bodice, begging for his touch.
    “Come here, Phoebe,” he said. He couldn’t help it: his demand came out with the tone of a pirate captain who was never disobeyed.
    The little smile that curled her lips looked remarkably like mutiny. She didn’t move.
    With one swift grab, he pulled her tight and rolled on top of her. She was soft and yielding, with the kind of generous curves that haunted a man’s mind, making him long to return home and grope his wife secretly behind a door.
    Even his leg ceased to hurt in the face of a sensation so raw that a groan came from the back of his throat. “Damn, what you do to me,” he whispered, pulling a few stray hairpins from her curls and tossing them to the floor.
    She bit her lip, a flash of white teeth making her lip even darker. He thought about those ruby-colored lips closing around his most private part, and another groan broke from his throat. “I want you so much.”
    “I am your wife,” she whispered back. “You can have me. I mean, you do have me.”
    The words burned into his heart and had him shaking from head to foot. But he couldn’t simply plunge into her.
    There was still that trace of fear at the back of her eyes. Her lover had probably been a smooth and sleek Englishman. And here she was with a brute of a sailor.
    He had to seduce her.
    Gently.
    “You are my wife,” he said, loving the sound of it, rolling them both onto their sides. “My only wife.” Her hair finally tumbled down over his fingers. He pulled her close and kissed her again. And again. They kissed and kissed, sweet and hot and unbearably sensual. He